, think the ways of the Rollses endlessly quaint or
melting, she might have been spared sleepless nights. Because the
difference between those two adjectives would mean the difference
between ecstasy and despair for her. Rags might be poor for an earl,
even an Irish earl, but he was hardly the sort to propose to a girl
his sister could speak of as "endlessly quaint."

Twelve days after they had arrived at Sea Gull Manor, Eileen wrote a
somewhat ungrammatical letter to a rich cousin in Dublin who had once
refused Rags, and in which she said:

DEAR POBBLES:

I wish you were here to pinch me. Then I would be sure whether I'm
asleep or awake. You'll know by the papers (s'pose poor old Rags _is_
worth a paragraph; anyhow Mubs is, now she's turned into a suff) how
we got carried on in the _Monarchic_ to New York. It won't be the
fault of American reporters if you've missed our news! They got at us
on the dock. Mubs loved it. Rags didn't.

Well, if you know a thing about us, since we were swept past
Queenstown by a giant wave that carried us on its back all the way to
America, you know we're staying with a family named Rolls. Rags met
Miss Rolls and her brother in London. And afterward they happened to
be on board our ship, so we chummed up, and Miss Rolls _would_ give up
her melting suite to poor half-dead Mubs and me. What a beast the sea
is! I don't know if I shall ever have the courage to go on the
disgusting old wet thing again. We came here to stay a fortnight, but
it's almost that now, and we couldn't be driven away with a stick.

We're having the time of our lives (I'm learning lots of _creamy_
American slang), and the Rollses are awfully kind. Ena is very nice,
when she doesn't try to talk as if she were English, and quite
handsome, with fine eyes, though not so good as her brother's. And
he--the brother, I mean--is the dearest thing in the shape of a man
you ever saw. Not that he's wonderfully handsome or anything, but, as
they say over here, he's just IT. I don't know what there is about
him, but--well, if I go on, I suppose you'll think I'm being _silly_.

I don't care; you were only a year older than I am now when you told
Rags kindly to go to the dickens. You said he cared only for your
money, poor Rags! That wasn't true. But now (I know you won't tell)
Ena R. is going for him for all she's worth. Mubs doesn't notice
anything about women except their being suffs or not; and I'm supposed
to be too young to